Jewish Leadership in Extremis

Abstract

`The point of departure in any discussion of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust must be the basic fact that the Jewish People did not succeed in defending these lives [of the six million who died]' --- thus historian Leni Yahil presented her view of the Jewish scene at the opening of her lecture at Yad Vashem's first international scholars' conference, held in 1968.1 Yahil was one of the first academic Holocaust researchers in Israel, and was already well known at the time because of her path-breaking study on the rescue of Danish Jewry.2 She would establish her reputation later in a comprehensive history of the Holocaust.3 Her view expressed the feeling of many Jews and non-Jews alike, at that time as well as later. Even if this approach can be justified to a certain extent, it is nevertheless based on a somewhat problematic assumption concerning the cohesion and mode of organization of `The Jewish People', an assumption that will be discussed later. But, if `the Jewish People did not succeed in defending the lives of its members', a necessary question regarding the Jewish leadership had to follow: how did this leadership behave vis-à-vis and react to the Nazi threat, and --- most emphatically --- in what did it fail?